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Ante-Nicene Fathers #5
Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol 5: Fathers of the Third Century
Book by Roberts, Alexander
707 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1867
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 5, 2023
Hippolytus och Novatianus är väl värda att läsa. Cyprianus är mördande tråkig, och inte speciellt relevant för en modern troende.
September 2, 2012
The writings of the great Church Fathers St. Hippolytus of Rome and St. Cyprian of Carthage was well as of Caius and the heretic Novatian were fascinating throughout, of course. Particularly interesting to me was reading the correspondence of St. Cyprian throughout the years of the persecutions in North Africa. The editors might have served both themselves and their readers better had they cut down a bit on the anti-papal footnotes.
August 21, 2016
Still trucking through the seemingly unending patristic tomes. Highlight for this volume were Cyprian's epistles. They breathed. Wisdom and discernment of a father, earnest affection and zealous encouragement of a brother. Those will definitely be read several more times over the coming decades. I appreciated the organization, too, which put all the works surrounding the Novatian controversy/heresy/schism in the same volume.
March 11, 2025
A compilation of preserved works both authentic and likely pseudepigraphal of Hippolytus of Rome, Cyprian of Carthage, Caius, and Novation.
Hippolytus of Rome: not a lot is known definitively about Hippolytus. There are a lot of legends, a lot of possibilities, but even the early church historians of the Roman era did not have a lot of hard and fast information about him.
His major work is the Refutation of All Heresies, of which most has been preserved and translated in this edition. The work definitely is a Description of All Heresies: Hippolytus describes the various Greek philosophical schools in detail as well as explaining the origins of a lot of the heresies and heretics and detailed a lot of what the heretics believed. The work is much lighter on the "Refutation" part, although he did set forth a defense of the faith in contrast to the perspectives of the heretics.
This edition also includes fragments of commentary on Scripture attributed to Hippolytus, some other works of describing various beliefs, his material on the last days, and some texts which were believed to be pseudepigraphal regarding the antichrist and the apostles.
Of note in Hippolytus is a fairly robust premillennialism which is not dispensational but who will anticipate a lot of what would become dispensational premillennialism 1600 years later: the antichrist in the OT prophets and in Revelation, etc. The pseudepigraphal works, at least, maintain a robust understanding of and confidence in the resurrection and the new heavens and new earth.
Cyprian of Carthage: Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, better known to us as Cyprian, definitely got thrown into the deep end.
Born into a rich pagan Roman African family in Carthage, and of Berber descent, Cyprian was converted and baptized into Christ at 35 years old around 245. By 249, he was elected Bishop of Carthage (in a contested election). In 250, Emperor Decius persecuted the church, and Cyprian elected to withdraw into a form of hiding, for which he would receive censure from many. From 251-256, Cyprian would be forced to address what to do with the many Christians who had lapsed in their faith in that persecution, the indulgence of some of those who had suffered greatly, and contested elections and baptisms from rivals and those whom Cyprian deemed as heretics and schismatics. In 256, Emperor Valerian kindled a new persecution of the church, in which Sixtus II of Rome was martyred; this time, Cyprian would not withdraw, and he was martyred in Carthage on 14 September 258.
Oh, and throughout his tenure as Bishop of Carthage, the Roman Empire was ravaged by a plague which has come to be called the Plague of Cyprian since he wrote about it in his De mortalitate (On the Plague). It was probably a hemorrhagic fever, something like Ebola, and probably had a similar 50% mortality rate.
For someone who had not long been a Christian before elevated to high leadership, elevated under quite dire circumstances, and who would maintain that position less than a decade before his own martyrdom, Cyprian proved quite prolific in his correspondence, exhortations, and treatises, preserved over time, as part of the Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 5.
In the many letters he sent and received which have been preserved, as well as in his discourses like On the Unity of the Church and On the Lapsed, we see Cyprian try to work out the various challenges presented to him. What do you do with those who proved willing to sacrifice to avoid suffering and death, or those who paid off an official to get a certificate of sacrifice, and now prove contrite? What happens when a rival faction elects a different bishop, and what is the fate of all those who are baptized under their regime?
Everyone can find something to justify themselves from Cyprian’s positions. Overall he remains quite the strict disciplinarian; it is not hard to understand how the Donatists could arise in Carthage a century or so after Cyprian, and claim Cyprian as a supporter for their rigorous strictness regarding the fate and condition of the lapsed and those who proved disobedient. At times he remains a strong champion of the church hierarchy and of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, which Roman Catholics have emphasized ever since, and would be the mantle Augustine would take up in his resistance to those Donatists. And yet he would also take the Bishop of Rome and others to task in regards to certain doctrinal matters and in terms of church discipline.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if you took Cyprian around 255 and dropped him into the world of 395 to see how all kinds of disputants attempted to claim him as their own. Would he maintain sympathy with the discipline of the Donatists, or would their schism from “catholicity” be too much for him? Could he still affirm the legitimacy of the Bishop of Rome and the “catholic consensus” even as it proved far more lenient in welcoming those baptized by “heretics” and receiving back the lapsed?
Yet such remains too much a burden to bear for Cyprian: it is highly unlikely he was thinking much of how his exhortations and emphases would be understood a century later, let alone after 1750 years. He was doing what he could based on what he had learned and attempted to deal with the situations with which he was confronted in the ways he thought would best honor God and work toward His purposes in the church.
To that end there is a lot of benefit in considering the works of Cyprian.
Caius: There's not a lot here; some of the associations are speculative. Most of what is preserved seems to be quotes from Eusebius. The ANF editors considered Caius as the author of the Muratorian Canon (or Muratorian Fragment), which remains an important third century testament to the understanding of what someone considered authoritative books in the New Testament.
Novatian: an early defense of Trinitarianism.
Additional anonymous materials: interesting evidence of the early disputes. The anonymous tractate on baptism sounded a lot like a 3rd century version of the late 19th/early 20th century arguments which were going on within churches of Christ.
Hippolytus of Rome: not a lot is known definitively about Hippolytus. There are a lot of legends, a lot of possibilities, but even the early church historians of the Roman era did not have a lot of hard and fast information about him.
His major work is the Refutation of All Heresies, of which most has been preserved and translated in this edition. The work definitely is a Description of All Heresies: Hippolytus describes the various Greek philosophical schools in detail as well as explaining the origins of a lot of the heresies and heretics and detailed a lot of what the heretics believed. The work is much lighter on the "Refutation" part, although he did set forth a defense of the faith in contrast to the perspectives of the heretics.
This edition also includes fragments of commentary on Scripture attributed to Hippolytus, some other works of describing various beliefs, his material on the last days, and some texts which were believed to be pseudepigraphal regarding the antichrist and the apostles.
Of note in Hippolytus is a fairly robust premillennialism which is not dispensational but who will anticipate a lot of what would become dispensational premillennialism 1600 years later: the antichrist in the OT prophets and in Revelation, etc. The pseudepigraphal works, at least, maintain a robust understanding of and confidence in the resurrection and the new heavens and new earth.
Cyprian of Carthage: Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus, better known to us as Cyprian, definitely got thrown into the deep end.
Born into a rich pagan Roman African family in Carthage, and of Berber descent, Cyprian was converted and baptized into Christ at 35 years old around 245. By 249, he was elected Bishop of Carthage (in a contested election). In 250, Emperor Decius persecuted the church, and Cyprian elected to withdraw into a form of hiding, for which he would receive censure from many. From 251-256, Cyprian would be forced to address what to do with the many Christians who had lapsed in their faith in that persecution, the indulgence of some of those who had suffered greatly, and contested elections and baptisms from rivals and those whom Cyprian deemed as heretics and schismatics. In 256, Emperor Valerian kindled a new persecution of the church, in which Sixtus II of Rome was martyred; this time, Cyprian would not withdraw, and he was martyred in Carthage on 14 September 258.
Oh, and throughout his tenure as Bishop of Carthage, the Roman Empire was ravaged by a plague which has come to be called the Plague of Cyprian since he wrote about it in his De mortalitate (On the Plague). It was probably a hemorrhagic fever, something like Ebola, and probably had a similar 50% mortality rate.
For someone who had not long been a Christian before elevated to high leadership, elevated under quite dire circumstances, and who would maintain that position less than a decade before his own martyrdom, Cyprian proved quite prolific in his correspondence, exhortations, and treatises, preserved over time, as part of the Ante-Nicene Fathers Volume 5.
In the many letters he sent and received which have been preserved, as well as in his discourses like On the Unity of the Church and On the Lapsed, we see Cyprian try to work out the various challenges presented to him. What do you do with those who proved willing to sacrifice to avoid suffering and death, or those who paid off an official to get a certificate of sacrifice, and now prove contrite? What happens when a rival faction elects a different bishop, and what is the fate of all those who are baptized under their regime?
Everyone can find something to justify themselves from Cyprian’s positions. Overall he remains quite the strict disciplinarian; it is not hard to understand how the Donatists could arise in Carthage a century or so after Cyprian, and claim Cyprian as a supporter for their rigorous strictness regarding the fate and condition of the lapsed and those who proved disobedient. At times he remains a strong champion of the church hierarchy and of the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome, which Roman Catholics have emphasized ever since, and would be the mantle Augustine would take up in his resistance to those Donatists. And yet he would also take the Bishop of Rome and others to task in regards to certain doctrinal matters and in terms of church discipline.
It would be interesting to see what would happen if you took Cyprian around 255 and dropped him into the world of 395 to see how all kinds of disputants attempted to claim him as their own. Would he maintain sympathy with the discipline of the Donatists, or would their schism from “catholicity” be too much for him? Could he still affirm the legitimacy of the Bishop of Rome and the “catholic consensus” even as it proved far more lenient in welcoming those baptized by “heretics” and receiving back the lapsed?
Yet such remains too much a burden to bear for Cyprian: it is highly unlikely he was thinking much of how his exhortations and emphases would be understood a century later, let alone after 1750 years. He was doing what he could based on what he had learned and attempted to deal with the situations with which he was confronted in the ways he thought would best honor God and work toward His purposes in the church.
To that end there is a lot of benefit in considering the works of Cyprian.
Caius: There's not a lot here; some of the associations are speculative. Most of what is preserved seems to be quotes from Eusebius. The ANF editors considered Caius as the author of the Muratorian Canon (or Muratorian Fragment), which remains an important third century testament to the understanding of what someone considered authoritative books in the New Testament.
Novatian: an early defense of Trinitarianism.
Additional anonymous materials: interesting evidence of the early disputes. The anonymous tractate on baptism sounded a lot like a 3rd century version of the late 19th/early 20th century arguments which were going on within churches of Christ.
April 17, 2015
This book is a beast. But not the one with a mark...
"This volume is worth reading, just maybe not all of it. While these authors are by and large more accessible than those of previous volumes (which I assume is caused by a combination of translation and manuscript availability), the content gets a bit repetitive. And of course as with any of these volumes the theology and exegesis aren't always as great as they could be. Still, there is gold to be mined here as we watch these faithful Christians try to obey Scripture and stay faithful to the Gospel. Though we don't always agree with their interpretations or actions, we can always benefit from their wisdom and example."
You can find the necessary links to Cyprian, Hippolytus, Caius, et al here:
http://coyleneal.blogspot.com/2015/04...
"This volume is worth reading, just maybe not all of it. While these authors are by and large more accessible than those of previous volumes (which I assume is caused by a combination of translation and manuscript availability), the content gets a bit repetitive. And of course as with any of these volumes the theology and exegesis aren't always as great as they could be. Still, there is gold to be mined here as we watch these faithful Christians try to obey Scripture and stay faithful to the Gospel. Though we don't always agree with their interpretations or actions, we can always benefit from their wisdom and example."
You can find the necessary links to Cyprian, Hippolytus, Caius, et al here:
http://coyleneal.blogspot.com/2015/04...
January 26, 2014
Once again I'm faced with the dilemma of how to properly review this book. If I had to rate this book on its ease of comprehension, the rating would be rather low. That's just something that comes with the territory of semi-ancient translated works such as these. If I were to give this book a proper review, I would have needed to actually take my time while I read instead of basically skim the text. Be that as it may, for those interested in learning more about the theology and philosophy of the Christian church fathers, this version, available as a free PDF download, is an excellent way to start.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews